It is nearing a year since I began this blog and this, my first assignment. When I started I thought it might take me, oh, say three, four months max per project. But a year? No way. Absolutely no way. And yet, well, it did.

That said, I am happy to announce, no, I am TOTALLY THRILLED to announce that this quilt is finished! It is not only finished, but photographed as well!

Title: “The Ground She Moves, Flies”

I’ll explain: working through the words with which I began the project: (Repeated Folding, Angled Sliding, and Rippling), I thought about an ongoing process of form-making, like the geological movements that constantly occur to make the patterns in our earth. Repeated small shifts over time/space make forms and then release those forms as time goes by. Small or large changes occur, each one folding the old patterns into the new formations.

A reading of the textures and patterns in the quilt suggest a timeline: first Repeated Folding occurs. Many little folds within the white fabric develop a fine scale texture that converges with the white and deep purple triangles of Rippling. Finally, a force of Angled Sliding shifts the pattern and the triangles move into or out of alignment. The pattern moves off beyond the boundaries of the quilt suggesting a continuation and the possibility of various other forms.

When taking in the pattern as a whole, I love the interplay between a sense of falling into place, or “grounding” from left to right, and one of “flying” when considered from right to left. Thus the reference to both in the title.

I chose to do a quilting pattern that could trace the movement in a series of stair-step lines. I made these very dense to increase the texture. I am still debating this one. In many ways I love the density of texture, but I also think some of the inherent texture of the folded pieces gets lost.

From a technical standpoint, this quilting was crazy difficult on my old Bernina with a small throat space. This had me dreaming of a Long Arm machine!